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PageOneQ The Capitol Hill newspaper quoted a campaign expert, Scott E. Thomas of the firm Dickstein Shapiro, as saying the closing of the PAC is a clear signal that Craig does not plan to remain in a "[politically related] field of endeavor." Craig has given away in excess of $540,000 from the committee. Recent gifts to campaigns were either returned or donated to charity. Craig has used funds from his reelection campaign funds to pay legal expenses related to his arrest and guilty plea in an undercover sex sting at a Minneapolis, MN men's room. Last fall, the campaign fund had over $470,000 cash on hand. Excerpts from the subscription required article follow: The account also got a refund from the Idaho Republican Party, which in December returned a $5,000 check it received from the leadership PAC last year. But public records show Craig sent the check right back. State party officials did not return a call for comment. The fund, which apparently stopped actively seeking money after the scandal broke, still managed to collect a few corporate checks in the last three months of the year. It received PAC contributions worth $2,500 each from Federal Express on Oct. 2, Entergy on Nov. 7 and Duke Energy on Dec. 6. Spokesmen for Arthur Wiese, a spokesman for Entergy, said Craig “remains a senior member of the Senate Energy Committee and his Alliance for the West organization was still fully functioning when the contribution was made, now more than two months ago.”
..... In September, he shelled out $22,952 from his campaign fund to pay the Brand Law Group for legal and strategic counsel on the scandal, FEC filings show. He closed the third quarter with $474,667 in cash on hand in the account.
Alliance for the West, the political action committee headed by Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has spent all of its assets and has filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to cease operations, Roll Call reports.#
Federal Express and Duke Energy said their companies’ contributions were made before news of Craig’s arrest and were either late getting delivered or banked.
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Originally published on Wednesday January 16, 2008.